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It
is 58 years since America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki By December
that year, the body count from the acute effects of radiation had
just been concluded. 'Little Boy' had killed 140,000 people. Some of those
who managed to survive suffered lifelong physical and psychological
harm. One of them
- Setsuko Iwamoto was a 13-year-old schoolgirl at the time. Born
in Tokyo, her parents had ironically sent her to Hiroshima to escape
the serial bombings on the capital. 154 Japanese cities in all had
been bombed in World War II - Hiroshima, a garrison town was surprisingly
spared till that horrific day. Children a
year older than Setsuko had been conscripted for the war effort. Italy had already
succumbed and Germany had fallen. Only Japan was at war with the
world. The bigger kids were despatched to stitch uniforms for the
soldiers, work in munition factories or to farms to increase food
supplies. Setsuko had
been at school that fateful morning, 1.4 kilometres from the epicentre
of the explosion that had occurred some 500 metres over the city.
As she walked cheerfully with her friends for morning assembly out
in the playground, she saw a golden hue followed by intense heat
come literally out-of-the-blues. In a split-moment she saw a second
flash of bluish-red as she fainted missing out on the thundering
noise that was soon to follow. As she came
around it was so dark she thought it was evening. Burnt bodies strewn
around. Fires all about. Children in anguish howling "Help
Mother" or "Help Teacher". Setsuko got up with what
was left of her school uniform sticking onto her burning skin and
started to look around in disbelief. A friend and
a teacher came up to her and said "Setsuko!" She was glad
that she was at least recognizable. Most others weren't. People
were jumping into the nearby rivers hoping to douse their blistering
skins only to find the water, boiling hot, compounding the wounds.
Nine long days later, she was 'discovered' by relatives who had
trekked from the countryside in search of her. The city was
in shambles. There was no food. No clothing - the kids had no upper
garments. No medicine except for painkillers. No one knew how to
treat the wounds for they did not know at the time the cause of
the injuries. Recuperating
in rural Hiroshima, young Setsuko had to rely on traditional medicines.
Insects that fed on body wounds were removed with chopsticks. Cucumber
juice was applied on her skin. In autumn that
year, the school kids were required to pick up human bones from
the city as reconstruction began. And what was school commenced
only the next year. At 71 now,
Ms. Setsuko Iwamoto bears no apparent scars - physical or psychological.
She was one of the lucky few. One regret she still carries is that
having survived, she did not do enough at the time to help those
who fell to the world's first nuclear bomb. "We had
to look after ourselves," she argues, seemingly with herself.
"There was no one to look after me. I thought I was alone in
this wicked world." And sure, she
has a message for the modern world, which she wants conveyed through
The Sunday Times on the eve of the 58th anniversary of this event. "In war
- there are no winners and losers," she says as we talk of
the 20,000 nuclear warheads that exist in the world today. "There
are only victims," she muses. Note: Three
days later .i.e. August 9, 1945, another US Air Force B-29 bomber
dropped a Plutonium bomb on the city of Nagasaki. That bomb was
called ‘Fat Man’. On August 14, Japan surrendered to the Allied Forces unconditionally. The next day, the Japanese Emperor made a radio announcement to his subjects that the war was over for Japan. From
one island to another
"We
had been given homework and one assignment was to obtain the opinions
of foreigners we met on the school trip on peace," say Haruka
Mikuni, Yuna Nishida and Ryo Narita. Help for their assignment came
in the form of the PM of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremasinghe, who was
also visiting the museum. The trip and
the meeting forgotten, the students journeyed back to their native
Yokohama. "And then came the invitation," grins Yuna.
"A fax came to the school from the Sri Lankan government inviting
the three girls to visit the country," adds Masahiko Watanabe,
the Principal of the Junior high school. The three students,
who are the best of friends, are 15 years old. "All that we
knew about Sri Lanka was the fact that it produced tea, had elephants
and was a place in which wooden pencils with graphite tips were
made." The students
who landed at the Colombo Airport last Sunday are scheduled to leave
the island today. "Our programme has been hectic," laughs
Haruka. Their weeklong tour of the island included trips to the
Museum, the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage and the Parliament. "We
were eager to see the PM again," says Ryo. "We are indebted
to him for the lovely time we had." Though no special
plans had been laid out for last Wednesday, the anniversary of the
Hiroshima bombing, the students were quick to point out that a large
assembly would be called back at home. "We have prayers at
8:15 as that was the time that the bomb was dropped." What
do they think of this country? "Before we flew down to Sri
Lanka we were told that it was very dangerous here but seeing the
country has changed our perspective." Their Principal
and English teacher accompanied the students. What was the gravest
problem they faced? "Not being able to speak English fluently
has been a disadvantage." Angulimala
misrepresented Error no. 1
is that what is presented as the Angulimala Paritta in the Pirith
Potha is a tragic combination of what is truly a part of what is
in the sutta by this name in the Majjhima Nikaya, together with
a pitiably garbled version of a commentarial tradition. It coversdifferent
time periods and also different places. Both parts are combined
and presented as one genuine whole. The commentary
says that the water, with which the chair on which the reciter of
the Angulimala Paritta sits is washed, is capable of facilitating
easy delivery to a pregnant woman. It further says that such a chair,
carved out of stone, did exist at a latter date, in a provincial
Indian town. It is not difficult to stretch one's imagination to
contain such degradations through time and space, within the sublime
religious core of a religion like Buddhism. Forget not the hands
and the lands through which Buddhism had to pass in its journey
from the north to the south of India. It is now clear that none
of these can pass off as part of the original paritta. We feel that
it is not a day too early to turn a new leaf in the presentation
of Buddhism. Error no. 2
is that almost all Piruvana Pirith Pothas attempt to present the
Angulimala Paritta as being imparted by the Omniscient One (Sarvagna)
to the powerful and prestigious (mahesakya) Arhant Angulimala. This
is an un-called for glorification. When thera Angulimala brought
comfort to the pregnant mother and her unborn child, on the instruction
of the Buddha, he was only a newly ordained monk in the order. This
was a pre-arhanthood achievement of Angulimala. Nor is Angulimala
said to have facilitated, at any stage, the delivery of the child. We were more
bewildered to find in some of the Sri Lankan Buddhist temples, both
in London and Paris, copies of some brand of the Piruvana Potha
which contained the following instruction appended to the Angulimala
Paritta; "In cases of difficulty of delivery of the baby, let
some water be chanted with this Paritta and the water be applied
on the abdomen of the pregnant mother. This would ease the delivery
of the baby." In the name of the Buddha, Dhamma and the Sangha,
who would detect these wild stories and take necessary action? It is impossible
for us to miss at this point the Buddhist sense of love and care
reflected here in the story of thera Angulimala and the equally
sensitive reaction on the part of the Buddha. It pervades human
life in its entirety, without any regional differences. It breathes
the welfare of humanity through the symbolism of the pregnant mother
and the unborn child. About 800 A.D., it produced in Japan a statue
of a Goddess (an Avalokitesvara) who presides over pregnancy and
who came to be called Koyasu Kannon. The Empress who was pregnant
at the time saw her in a dream. She had this statue made (reproduced
here) and installed in a famous temple in Japan. This is why
we have established at the Narada centre, nearly a year ago, the
Pregnancy Care Consortium to invoke blessings on pregnant mothers,
at any stage in their pregnancy, and their unborn babies (sotthi
te hotu sotthi gabbhassa). The date is the first Sunday of every
month. For this purpose, we use the asseveration of thera Angulimala referred to above. We give would-be-mothers a laminated copy of the real Angulimala Paritta, together with its English and Sinhala translations, for use by the husbands, parents or in-laws. The number of pregnant women now being served by us stands at 105. Let us ungrudgingly pay adequate respect to the Buddha’s word that "the Mother is the friend in one's home - Mata mittam sake ghare". |
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Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
